Multiple roles and enhancements of makers in the post-industrial design practices: An inquiry for non-expertise in design

Abstract

The present paper aims to reflect possible enhancements of makers in design practices through the shared aspects of criticisms in industrial design. Such criticisms included industrialization’s effects on the rationalization of design processes, separation of design tasks, and separation of the industrial design profession from the artisans and craftspeople. Makers’ multiple roles in post-industrial production and their interpretations of industrial products provided the article for understanding their possible interventions in industrial design. The main research question of this article is as follows: What are the possible enhancements of makers that are useful to overcome the problems of industrialization in design? The present study method included a literature review on various critical aspects of industrial design to demonstrate the ones shared by the makers. Selected quotations from the semi-structured interviews conducted with nineteen maker participants accompany the literature review to introduce their varied skills that emerged in the collaborative practices and their perspectives of making for the generation of new meanings in design. In the last section, makers’ shared aspects with the critical views in design, such as their strategies for gaining autonomy in their practices and creating personal meanings, are discussed to overcome the separation of design tasks and rationalization processes in industrial design.